Comments

Not suprised. Would be suprised if they didn't. Perhaps our response to libraryland security would be to change our recording systems or lend out certain books for free. Hope Im not tracked by the CIA myself now!!!
Im not as political as I was in my youth but I think librarians could help by providing non-biased coverage of the war and continue covering issues that are not "our issues" but are connected, such as Irans continued child executions and its systematic cleansing of minority Arab populations, reminders that the people we are supporting in Iraq have laws that callfor the death of children and women and homosexuals (which are carried out very frequently by stoning and non-drop hanging). We should also be making the issue of government security measures and libraries more of an issue.

The CIA does not track anyone domestically. The CIA collects extranational intelligence. There are other members of the intelligence community that do track intelligence internally. You can submit a FOIA request to see what they know about you. It is all perfectly legal to ask what information they hold on you.

"The CIA does not track anyone domestically." You must live in a vast, drunkenly blissful ignorance of a sort to make such statements without qualification when addressing an issue made in the kind of context it was made in. Your serious omission makes me think you could have been a Bolshevick defending the Russian revolution before Stalin took full power, "Comrade Stalin would never create a police state imprisioning and killing millions of people, you must be a crazy paranoid to suggest such a thing." Or you could have been am early Nazi apologist in the early days of Hitler, "The Fuhrer would never kill millions of Jews and imprison anyone who disagree with him, you must be a crazy paranoid to suggest such a thing."For if you knew anything about history, you would know the CIA has done it before. They'll do it again, and are likely doing it now, given the precedent of their behavior in the past and the hysteria about "terrorists" since 9-11.Perhaps because you are this way because you are an inverted paranoid of a certain type (perhaps psychiatrists have another term for this): you are irrationally blissfully sanguine and utterly obtuse and abnormally optimistic and uncautious about the reality and possibility of human evil backed by huge government/corporatist power and capability.See this Wiki entry, e.g., here about the CIA having done it before:"Things came to a head in the early 1970s, around the time of the Watergate political burglary affair. A dominant feature of political life during that period were the attempts of Congress to assert oversight of U.S. Presidency, the executive branch of the U.S. Government. Revelations about past CIA activities, such as assassinations and attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, *illegal domestic spying on U.S. citizens* [my emphasis], provided the opportunities to execute Congressional oversight of U.S. intelligence operations."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Intelligence_ Agency

I assume you are a librarian if you are on here, and if you as a librarian count wikipedia as an authoratative source you do a disservice to the profession and your patrons.

I wrote that there were other members of the intelligence community that do conduct domestic operations but you choose to lump them all under the CIA. The CIA has other missions and a not unlimited budget so it really has neither the staff, time, nor funding to take on jobs with which the other members of the IC are tasked.

Inverted paranoid? WTF are you talking about? because I don't think the sky is falling you make new entries for the DSM-V.

You must live in a vast, drunkenly blissful ignorance of a sort to make such statements without qualification when addressing an issue made in the kind of context it was made in.

Tsk, tsk, my dear young woman; so cynical so young. . . .

I think a simple correction would have been sufficient; something along the lines of: Well, it is illegal for the CIA to monitor activity domestically, but it's also treason to divulge it if they actually are so we'll never know for certain just what they're up to. Also, although I will grant that the current poisoned environment toward civil liberties and freedom in general is certainly conducive to more such surveillance, I really don't think it's necessary. The FBI can simply set up surveillance centers at all the major search engine, ISP, and e-mail providers with the willing compliance of those corporations.

In any event, it is well documented that the NSA is the agency inolved in Bush's illegal wiretapping program.

"if you as a librarian count wikipedia as an authoratative source you do a disservice to the profession and your patrons."I was a librarian, BTW, but still do a big part of what is typical work in it now.On what grounds do you make this claim about Wiki? (But then again, when do you ever seek foundation for any of your numerous broad, absolute-sounding and consistently utterly certain generalizations on issues susceptible to multiple interpretations and viewpoints?) Wiki has pluses and minuses, I am well aware. E.g., see this comment from Scott McLemee:"The advantage of Wikopedia's extreme openness is that people are able to produce fantastically thorough entries on topics far off the beaten path. The wiki format creates the necessary conditions for nerd utopia." (He then gives a great example of this.)He adds, "Wikipedia is not necessarily less reliable than more prestigious reference works. A study appearing in the journal Nature found that Wikipedia entries on scientific topics were about as accurate as corresponding articles in the Encyclopedia Britannica."http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/06/14/mcl emeeIn light of this and many other varied viewpoints in Wiki that one could tap into faster then you can type "Google," I don't know how you can be so unambiguous, strident and black/white in your criticism. But I should know by now: that's just you. it's the way you do things. I forget sometimes.I myself have seen things in Wiki that I knew were wrong, others I knew were right. Same goes for plenty of sources I've had to deal with in a long career. In case you have forgotten (but surely you knew or know this?): you evaluate the source, and there's lots of ways to that. I know enough about the topic from other sources to enable to see that my "quick and dirty" lookup on wiki showed it had adequate information.I'm well aware other orgs do domestic intel, and I did not "lump" them under the CIA.And one is not an inverted paranoid for not seeing the sky is falling. An inverted paranoid is someone who is utterly and consistantly certain everything is fine, no matter how much compelling evidence to the contrary, which is always *denied or ignored* when it is brought into the picture. Denial and willful ignorance are key to this disorder. Perhaps we can rename it with a more friendly-sounding phrase: the "Severe Polyanna Disorder," or "SPD."